How to Choose Best Rated Wood Pellets for Cooking?

In terms of eco-friendly energies, wood pellets have surpassed Biomass to use in daily life. We can conveniently buy the best-rated wood pellets at a supermarket or online stores. There are various types, flavors, and brands of pellets to choose from, which gives us a headache to decide.

This article will help you with the decision of what are the best-rated wood pellets to buy and vital keys to select high-quality ones. Let’s dig in now!

Best Rated Wood Pellets – How to Differentiate High-Quality from Inadequate ones?

It is impossible to assure 100% whether wood pellets are high quality or not by the appearance. Though there are some significant differences between the decent and the low-quality wood pellets, we can recognize the look and feel when touching them.

Evenness of Pellets

Highly qualified wood pellets are often produced in chain production. They will have better consistency and even size. Meanwhile, low-quality pellets usually lack firmness and synchronization of length in the same bag.

The evenness of shots in bulk makes combustion efficient because every pellet provides a similar heat and burning duration.

Moisture Level

10-15% is the perfect moisture level wood pellets should contain to burn evenly. The higher moisture wood pellets content, the lower quality they are.

When selecting wood pellets for cooking, you need to check this criterion carefully. You can check moisture level with your hands, but it is tough to define the pellets’ humidity correctly. Therefore, you should check with a thermometer to get more precise humidity.

Evenness and moisture level of wood pellets let us know whether the pellets are high quality or not. However, in terms of ash content and energy density, we need deeper examinations and trials to develop a correct evaluation.

Ash Content

According to the European Pellet Council, the ash content represents how efficient the combustion is. The more ash content left after combustion, the worse wood pellets become.

Experiments show that high-quality wood pellets leave less ash than others, usually below 0.7%. The low ash content also makes cleaning after cooking easier for us.

Besides, wood pellets with several materials, such as pine, polar, and beech, have high efficient combustion.

Fine Amount

Fine is another term for dust discharged during wood pellets’ combustion. The amount of dust directly affects the burning and heating process’s efficiency.

Wood pellets are restrained from falling down to the in-feed auger by fines. Nevertheless, fines prevent fuel from feeding the boiler smoothly.

The amount of fines should be below 1% compared to the weight of wood pellets you use. Buyers prefer wood pellets sold in packs because they make fewer fines than those delivered in bulk.

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Energy Density

Regarding energy density, also called calorific value, you cannot check it yourself. Energy density is reflected by Heating Value (unit: kW/kg). This figure appears on the packaging of the wood pellets and often varies around 4,6 – 5,1 kW/kg.

The high density of energy provides the pellets with better combustion. Specifically, the pellets burn longer and give more extreme heat.

If wood pellets contain high energy density, they heat evenly and effectively; as a result, you can use less pellets at one time.

How to Choose Flavours of Wood Pellets for Different Dishes?

There are some popular flavors of wood pellets, including Mesquite, Hickory, Apple, Cherry, Pecan for cooking, but choosing the perfect one for your food is not easy.

Here is some experience for you to cook the best meals with the use of wood pellets.

Poultry: Poultry goes well with most flavors, so it is up to your taste to choose which is preferable.
Pork: Except for Mesquite’s strong flavour, you can smoke or grill pork with any other flavour of wood pellets.
Beef: Cooking beef is trickier. You should use Mesquite, Hickory, and Pecan flavour to perfectly neutralize the unpleasant smell and embrace the beef’s freshness.
Seafood: Cherry flavour is the most perfect match for seafood.
Veggie: Apple and Cherry flavour are changeable to use for cooking veggie.